The present invention relates generally to a golf club, and more particularly to a golf club head, which can absorb impact when hitting.
When a golfer hitting a ball with a golf club, most of the force is generating at the moment when the golf club head contacting with the ball. A large impact and vibration will transfer from the head to the shift of the golf club. Finally, it will transfer to the golfer. The impact and the vibration will decrease the performance of hitting. To prevent above problem, conventional golf club head is made of a damping material, which has the capacity of absorbing vibration. The advantage of the head is to absorb the impact and vibration by the material itself when hitting the ball. Thus, the golfer can grip the golf club all the time when hitting ball. The other advantage of the golf club head, which is made of the damping material, is to increase the time of the golf club head in contact with the ball. According to the theory, it will rise the ball controllability.
Most of the damping material applied to the convention golf club head is S25C steel, pure magnesium or pure aluminum. However, the damping property of the S25C steel (the constituents and some mechanical properties of the S25C are shown in Table 2 and Table 3) is not good enough (Qxe2x88x921=0.5xc3x9710xe2x88x922). So, the golf club head made of S25C steel can not provide a good capacity of absorbing impact and vibration as the designer wants. Beside that, the S25C steel has a poor property of anti-rust. the pure magnesium and pure aluminum provided a good capacity of absorbing impact and vibration, but they has a lower strength property and not easy to weld to the other elements of the golf club head in a strong status.
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide a golf club head which has a capacity of absorbing impact and vibration when hitting a ball.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a golf club head which has a good capacity of anti-rust and easy to weld.
The present invention provides an alloy steel to achieve the objectives of the present invention. The golf club head of the present invention desirably has a head shell, a face and a neck, wherein at least one of which is made of the steel alloy. The constituents of the steel alloy comprise maximum amounts of 0.03% of C by weight, 0.2xcx9c0.6% of Si by weight, maximum amounts of 0.15% of Mn by weight, maximum amounts of 0.03% of P by weight, maximum amounts of 0.03% of S by weight, 10.5xcx9c13.5% of Cr by weight, 0.8-1.4% of Mo by weight, 0.8-1.4% of Al by weight, 0.8xcx9c1.4% of Ni by weight, 0.02xcx9c0.1% of Nb by weight, maximum amounts of 0.01% of N by weight, maximum amounts of 0.03% of Cu by weight, and the rest being Fe. The steel alloy is made by a metallurgical method whereby the main crystal structure of said steel alloy is ferrite.
Before completing the alloy steel for the present invention. The inventor of the present invention made seven test alloys (F1xcx9cF7) with a variety of constituents and different quantities of the constituents. Measuring the material properties of the testing alloy to find the vary prescription of the steel alloy of the present invention.
Please refer to the Table 1, shown the constituents and some mechanical properties of the testing alloy. Each of the testing alloys being vacuum induction melting in a vacuum melting furnace. The temperature of casting set to 950xc2x0 C.xcx9c1050xc2x0 C. The temperature of rolling set to 950xc2x0 C.xcx9c1050xc2x0 C. The damping property of the testing alloys are tested by the method of resonance of audio frequency, the voltage is 15V. Tensile test is proceeded in an universal testing machine, and watching the crystal structures of the testing alloys with a microscope.
Analyzing the Table 1, hereunder are our conclusions:
1. For the crystal structures of the testing alloys, we found the F5 and F6 each has a double crystal structures of ferrite steel+pearlite steel. The damping properties (Qxe2x88x921) of the F5 and F6 testing alloy are 2.3 and 3.6, respectively. They are significantly smaller than the other testing alloys(F1xcx9cF4 and F7) which has a single crystal structure of ferrite steel. So, we conclude that the alloy with a single crystal structure of ferrite steel has a superior damping property.
2. Adding chromium (Cr) to the alloy can prevent rusting. According to Table 1, when the Cr exceeds 10 wt %, the damping property of the alloy will increase significantly. In comparison with F1 and F3, when the Cr increasing from 12 wt % to 15wt %, the value of the damping property did not change significantly, but decrease a lot in the percentage of elongation. Comparing with F1 and F6, the second crystal structurexe2x80x94pearlite steel will come out when there is about 10 wt % of Cr in the alloy. So, the optimum quantity of Cr is about 12 wt %.
3. When the testing alloy contained less than 0.005 wt % C, such as F2 and F7, the alloys had superior properties in damping and mechanical performance, But the alloys are difficult in metallurgical process. Thus, setting the quantity of C to xe2x89xa60.03 wt % is a good choice.
4. Adding Ni to increase the ductility of the alloy. Comparing F5 and F7, to prevent forming the double crystal structure of ferrite steel+pearlite steel, adding Ni only at a lower quantity of C to form a single crystal structure of ferrite steel of the alloy.
5. In comparison with F3 and F4, Al can increase the damping property of the alloy. But if there is a large quantity of Al, the alloy will form a double crystal structure. The optimum quantity of Al is about 1 wt %.
6. Adding a small quantity of Nb can make the crystal grain of the alloy fineness. The optimum quantity of Nb is about 0.04 wt %.
7. Adding Mo can strengthen the crystal base of the alloy, it also can increase the strength and the anti-rusting of alloy. The optimum quantity of Mo is about 1 wt %.
8. If the alloy had too much Si, it will increase the brittleness of the alloy. Too less of Si, it will decrease the damping capacity of the alloy. The optimum quantity of Si is about 0.35 wt %.
According to the conclusions above, the inventor of the present invention creates a steel alloy with a special prescription.
Please refer to the Table 2, wherein the steel alloy contains xe2x89xa60.001 wt % carbon (C), 0.3821 wt % silicon (Si), 0.0801 wt % manganese (Mn), 0.0119 wt % phosphorous (P), 0.0046 wt % sulfur (S), 12.45 wt % chromium (Cr), 1.219 wt % molybdenum (Mo), 0.942 wt % aluminum (Al), 1.178 wt % nickel (Ni), 0.045 wt % niobium (Nb), xe2x89xa60.01 wt % nitrogen (N), and xe2x89xa60.03 wt % copper (Cu), the rest mainly being iron (Fe). The steel alloy is made by a metallurgical method involving a vacuum melting process and a normalizing process at 950xc2x0 C.xc3x971 hr, whereby the main crystal structure of the steel alloy is ferrite steel.
Some of the mechanical properties of the steel alloy and the S25C steel are shown in Table 3. According to the data of Table 3, the damping coefficient of the steel alloy (Qxe2x88x921=9.0xc3x9710xe2x88x922) is 18 times larger than that of the S25C steel (Qxe2x88x921=0.5xc3x9710xe2x88x922). The steel alloy also has superior mechanical capacities than that of the S25C steel in yield strength, tensile strength, ratio of elongation and ratio of contraction.
The main reason of the damping coefficient of the present steel alloy being larger than the S25C steel is that the present steel alloy has a single crystal structure of ferrite steel, whereas the S25C steel has a double crystal structure of ferrite steel+pearlite steel. According to the theory of material science, the present steel alloy is softer and the crystal structure is uniform after normalizing. The present steel alloy can absorb forces in the vertical direction to the horizontal direction by the crystal boundary, so that the present steel alloy has a superior damping capacity than the S25C steel.
Next, wet put the present steel alloy and the S25C steel into seawater to test the anti-rusting capacities thereof.
Please refer to Table 4 for the result of the rusting test. The test results show that the present steel alloy had a bigger rusting quantity (0.0231 g/hm2) and then decreased as time went on. After the 25th day of testing, the rusting quantity of the present steel alloy kept in 0.0003 g/hm2. But the rusting quantity of the S25C steel, after the 18th day of testing, kept in 0.03 g/hm2 it has 100 times the rusting quantity of the present steel alloy. Such test proves that the present steel alloy has a superior anti-rusting capacity compared to the S25C steel.
Now, we manufacture a golf club head using the steel alloy.
The golf club head has a head shell which is the main body of the head, a face which is the area to contact with the ball when hitting, fixed on the head shell and a neck fixed on the head shell for fixing a shaft of the golf club, wherein, the head shell and the neck can be made of SUS17-4PH, SUS15-5PH, SUS13-8PH, 255 stainless steel, pure titanium, titanium alloy, aluminum alloy, or tungsten-nickel alloy. The face is made of the above-described present steel alloy having a thickness of 3 mm (in practice, the thickness of the face can be made between 2.5 mmxcx9c4 mm), a hardness of HRB 80xcx9cHRB 90, and a tensile strength ranging between 50xcx9c62 kgf/mm2.
There is another way to manufacture the face of the golf club head of the present invention. We shaped the present steel alloy into a board, and mounted the board on the face of the golf club head by brazing. The board can be attached on the face with overall surface contact thereof, and fixed by brazing.
The solder, which used in brazing the board on the face, is SUS309L. The constituents of the solder are shown in the table under:
We found the brazing performance is effected by the diameter of the solder and the voltage. The experience told us, when the diameter of the solders are 4.0 mm and 5.0 mm, there is a good brazing performance as the voltage are 130xcx9c180 A and 160xcx9c240 A, respectively.